Nowadays, there are many different smartcards, for example banking cards, access cards, loyalty cards and electronic documents. A card holder may own different cards for many different applications. It may not be very convenient for a card holder to store more than a few cards inside a wallet. Furthermore, storing more than a few cards in a wallet may increase the risk that the cards are mechanically stressed or damaged. Also, it may take an unacceptable amount of time to identify a specific smartcard among a set of smartcards. Therefore, there is a need to provide a single smartcard suitable for different applications.
In order to increase the overall level of security of smartcard systems, user authentication is often requested by smartcard applications. Typically, authentication information is entered through a user interface of a host system, such as a banking terminal, a PC, a laptop or a mobile phone. However, as described in the European patent application titled “Security Token and Authentication System” (application number EP12155351.5, filed on 14 Feb. 2012 by applicant NXP B.V.), which is incorporated herein by reference, authentication information can also be entered through a user interface directly embedded into a smartcard.
If the user interface for entering authentication information is provided on the smartcard, the user convenience will improve. Furthermore, the overall level of security will improve, because the verification of said authentication information can be done on the smartcard instead of on an external device. However, user interfaces for entering authentication information on smartcards have the disadvantage that they are typically designed fir a single application. Therefore, it is difficult to implement such user interfaces on multi application smartcards.